Theatreland economics

How the West got lost

Subsidised theatres are squeezing playhouses in London

LONDON'S theatreland may suffer from cramped seating and be served by lousy theatre bars, but it still excels at one thing: spreading rumours. So the news that Andrew Lloyd Webber, its most commercially successful son, has been approached by a bidder for all of his Really Useful Group, and by bidders for a handful of the theatres it co-owns, has created a flurry of excitement. Since the theatres that, according to backstage whispers, are the focus of serious interest are all smallish playhouses rather than big theatres that tend to house musicals, it also prompts a question: is it now impossible to make money by putting on plays in the West End?

“The West End has been written off before,” says Peter Longman, director of The Theatres Trust. Competition is always intense: London's theatregoers are so capricious that of ten new shows, seven will close early, two will break even and one makes money. Nevertheless, this time the prognosis doesn't look good. Six productions closed within a month of opening last summer, an unusually speedy death. And there is also evidence that two more fundamental shifts are luring away audiences from London's commercial theatres.

First, tastes seem to be changing. Though audiences in the West End are not falling, that's mostly thanks to the allure of musicals, not plays. The Society of London Theatre's members ran at 65% capacity in 2003, the most recent year for which figures are available. But this disguises a big difference between musicals and plays. For the musicals, attendance averages 68% of capacity; for plays, attendance is somewhat lower, at 56%. So if a show doesn't contain some warbling and plenty of sequins, half the red velvet chairs are likely to stay folded up. And in a business in which the costs are all fixed, a few punters more or less can make the difference.

Second, London's subsidised theatres are doing unusually well. Across the river at the National Theatre, which receives around £14m ($26m) in public money every year, attendance has been running at over 90% of capacity for the past 20 months. That's partly thanks to a sponsorship deal with Travelex, a foreign-exchange company, which allowed the National to sell 170,000 tickets for £10 over the quiet summer months; and partly to aggressive programming. Hits like “Jerry Springer—the Opera”, “His Dark Materials” and “The History Boys” have provided a string of sell-outs. By the time plays transfer from the subsidised sector to the commercial West End, they have often lost both their initial buzz and their lead actors, already booked to star in something else.

That leaves the playhouses hoping to recover some glitz by casting well-known American actors in movie adaptations. So far this has worked, but the formula is likely to become tired quite soon, leaving producers scratching their heads again.

With subsidised theatre increasingly hard to distinguish from commercial theatre, the West End thinks it should be subsidised too. The Theatres Trust has a plan that would involve spending £250m (half provided by the taxpayer) over 15 years on sprucing up the West End's playhouses. Wisely, the government has not, so far, accepted the scheme.